


Tiny Little Holes

by Goldy



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 12:11:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1940580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldy/pseuds/Goldy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor adjusts to one of the pitfalls of being part human. Namely, memory loss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tiny Little Holes

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to mrv3000 for the beta!

It didn’t take the Doctor long to discover a human brain was a rubbish place to store 900 years worth of Time Lord history.

He was staring into the refrigerator when it hit him for the first time. He couldn’t remember what he opened it for.

Milk? No. Vegetables? Eugh, no. Jam? No, that wasn’t right. He hadn’t made toast, and Jackie always pitched a royal fit when he stuck his bare fingers in the jar.

So then what…?

Feeling _very_ perplexed, the Doctor shut the door, and turned around, coming face-to face with Jackie.

“EEEEEK,” he yelped. Jackie raised her eyebrows, hands going to her hips. The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, “You’ve been standing there for a while, haven’t you?”

“Have been, yeah,” she said. She cricked her neck around him, peering curiously at the fridge. “Did you just open the door for a nice cool down? Thought you’d air condition the lounge, is that it? I don’t know what it’s like in that space ship of yours, but here on Earth, we’ve got to pay for energy.”

“What? No,” he said. “I wasn’t… why would anyone do that? No, never mind. I was hungry.”

Jackie turned her gaze from the fridge to the Doctor. He fidgeted.

“Of course you’re hungry,” she muttered. “Just look at you. You’re even skinnier as a human.”

“It… it doesn’t really work like that, actually,” he said, beginning to eye his escape routes. She was blocking the doorway. Bugger.

“Well, you just leave it to me, then,” she said, suddenly switching from an interrogating drill sergeant to the picture of maternal concern. She elbowed him out of the way and opened the fridge. “Let’s see what we’ve got here…”

His gaze immediately flew to the doorway. Jackie was no longer blocking the exit.

“I’ve got… that is… I think Rose is calling,” he said hurriedly, taking off before she could subject him to her cooking. Best to get away from the fridge and contemplate this ‘memory loss’ conundrum in private. Smashing idea.

He heard Jackie mutter behind him. “Alien or not, I’ll never understand that man.”

****

He studied himself carefully in the bathroom mirror. Same face, same eyes, same hair—same _everything_. Just with one heart instead of two. That was supposed to be the only difference.

He closed his eyes and tried to remember. He’d been eight when he looked into the Time Vortex. Then it had been Time Lords in funny hats, the Academy, and an endless drone of strict rules. He’d been 426 when he’d finally managed to leave Gallifrey with Susan. Or had he been 446? Ian and Barbara came first and then Vicky, Ben, Polly, Jamie, and Victoria.

He scrubbed one hand over his chin and tried another direction. The square root of 7, 984 was 89.3532316. Shakespeare wrote _Romeo and Juliet_ in 1593. Queen Elizabeth’s coronation proceeded smoothly (more or less) in 1953.

But the point still stood, didn’t it? How couldn’t very well stand there and remember something he’d gone and forgotten.

He was startled out of his musings by a knock on the door. “Doctor?” said Rose. She tired the door handle. “Are you in there?” She sounded bewildered. Neither of them had locked the bathroom door for months.

“Yeah,” he said. He turned on the tap and splashed cold water on his face. “Nearly done.”

“Is something wrong?” she said. Now she sounded a bit hurt. “Mum said you were looking for me.”

“Fine,” he said quickly. “Hold on a touch.”

“Ah. Vanity,” she said knowingly. “Doctor, I promise to keep you even when you go grey.”

His one heart did a funny sort of loopy thing in his chest and he moved to unlock the door. Rose was inside as soon as the lock clicked, peering into his eyes like it might help her gain insights into what was going on in his mind.

He tried to look innocent. Rose had enough difficulty accepting that he was still the Doctor. But if he was losing his memories, if he didn’t have the things that made him _him_ , then what? Then he really would be just a clone or a knock-off of the real thing. Without his memories, he’d be nothing.

He contemplated this horrifying thought for a few seconds before pulling Rose into a tight hug. She seemed surprised, but then she hugged him back, her arms winding around his neck.

“Okay, now I _know_ something’s wrong,” she said. “What is it?”

He buried his nose in her neck and breathed her in, hesitating. Finally he said, “Just a grey hair. Like you said.”

He felt her smirk against his cheek. “Poor thing. However will you cope?”

“I’ll borrow your hair dye, of course.”

Rose pulled away and wrinkled her nose. “You’re gonna go blonde?”

He shrugged. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Or…” Rose said, standing up on tiptoes and narrowing her eyes at his hairline, “you could just get rid of it.”

He felt a slight prick near his right ear and Rose pulled away to reveal a thin piece of grey hair between her fingers. He blinked, momentarily appalled that he actually _was_ going grey.

“There, all better,” she said, smiling proudly at him. She patted the top of his head. “I’d say you could hold out on the dye for another few years, yeah?”

He opened his mouth soundlessly. Rose’s grin widened and she leaned in to kiss him. She tasted faintly like coffee and the chocolate croissant she’d had for breakfast. He mentally noted that his advanced taste buds still seemed to be working.

Or _maybe_ he just happened to be hyper-aware of Rose? He remembered every little thing about her—from shop window dummies to the first time she got time travel sickness to the way she furrowed her eyebrows when she was trying to suss something out. In that case, even if he was losing all his advanced Time Lord senses, he'd probably _still_ be able to sense what Rose had eaten for breakfast.

He tried to figure out if this was in any way comforting. On the one hand, he could be losing everything that made him... well, him. On the other hand, Rose might never know.

He should really run some tests.

“Missed you,” Rose said, pulling away. He made an effort to focus on what she was saying. “We’ve really got to get you working for Torchwood full time. It’s not like what you think, you know. We’ve changed it since the old days. It’s dad’s—Pete’s—rules now. Besides, we could work together.”

“Right,” he said distractedly. He darted around her and paused in front of the bathroom door. He reached for his glasses (it was a habit, even if he didn’t exactly need them for this experiment) and then leaned in and licked the doorjamb. He smacked his lips together. Ooh, a water based paint, and a pine base. With just a hint of mint.

His taste buds appeared to be working fine, then. It wasn’t just Rose.

He turned back around, suddenly feeling much more upbeat. So Jackie had caught him staring blankly into the refrigerator. Big deal. There could be any millions of explanations other than “premature memory loss.” It was probably nothing.

Rose stared, eyes darting from him to the door. “You sure you’re alright?” she finally said.

“Never better,” he said. “So Torchwood, eh?”

“You’d get your own desk,” Rose said, quirking her eyebrows at him. “And a cubby hole. I keep a sandwich in mine.”

He considered Rose seriously. He could do without the desk (well, the paperwork, mostly), but he _did_ like sandwiches. And he was a bit tired of trying to sneak around the Tyler mansion avoiding Jackie all day.

Rose’s voice softened. “Don’t you want to be out there saving the world from aliens again?”

He flushed guiltily. “I’m… adjusting.”

Well, he’d plugged the piece of TARDIS coral the other Doctor had given him into the outlet in the backyard and spent most of the day watering and staring at it in hopes that it would magically start growing overnight. So far, he hadn’t had any luck, but he was far from giving up. He might be slated for death in 60 years, but there were so many planets he and Rose could see in that time.

If only that piece of coral would grow.

Rose seemed to sense his thoughts. “We’ll get the TARDIS back, Doctor. Just got to wait for it, yeah? In the meantime, Torchwood’s got these huge warehouses, packed full of all sorts of alien tech. We’ve been looking for someone with he know-how to go through and organize it...”

She trailed off and looked at him with wide, innocent eyes. Ooh, like she _didn’t_ know what would pique his interest.

Trying not to sound too curious, he said, “What sort of alien tech?”

“Dunno,” Rose said. “Why don’t you come in with me tomorrow and see? It’s better than hiding from my mum all day. She keeps saying she wants to fatten—”

“Okay, okay,” he cut in. “Yeah, I’ll come.” He paused and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Blimey, I just agreed to work for Torchwood.”

Rose grinned, trying to hide her excitement and not doing a very good job. “You’ll get used to it.”

He grinned back at her. There were probably worse things he could do than help Rose defend the Earth from aliens. “Oh, I’m sure I will.”

****

“Doctor!”

He heard Rose’s shout from across the hub. He jumped up from his computer, dodged around a Torchwood intern, and dashed up the stairs to the main monitoring room.

Rose had her eyes trained on a computer. Pete hovered next to her, hands folded up under his arms. The rest of the Torchwood team buzzed around them, pushing buttons and making harried notes.

Rose barely looked at him as he approached her. “We’re just getting a lock now,” she said. She squinted at the screen in front of her and then hit the ‘enter’ key. “Okay, take a look.”

He dug out his glasses and leaned over her shoulder. Rose sent him a quick grin before leaning back enough to touch him. He almost nuzzled her neck before remembering that Pete Tyler was glowering at them. Really, paramilitary groups could be such a bore, always demanding professionalism in the face of an alien invasion. It could be _anything_ —absolutely anything—heading towards Earth, and yet everyone was primed for the end of the world.

Rose quirked her lips at him like she knew what he was thinking, and then said, “D’you recognize it?”

He focused on the beeping screen, mind drawing a momentary blank.

“Ten minutes until they break atmosphere,” said the Torchwood member on their right. “How do we proceed?”

“Oh, keep your pants on,” the Doctor muttered. “Ten minutes. Lots of time left to panic in, eh?”

“We _wait_ ,” came Pete Tyler’s snapped reply. “Give the Doctor a chance.”

Rose raised her eyebrows at him expectantly. “Doctor?”

The ship was practically bursting with radiation. It was big, then, and certainly not fuel efficient, but the technology was too advanced to be new.

“Could be a scavenging mission,” he said. He focused on Rose, dimly aware that the rest of Torchwood had gone silent around them. “Use up the resources on your own planet and you have to start getting them somewhere else.”

He rubbed at the back of his neck and leaned closer to the screen, eyes tracking the radiation patters. “If I just knew who… YES. No— _yes_. It’s the Sclorum. Close relative to the Sycorax. You’ve met them before—Christmas Day, sword fight—”

“Lost your hand,” Rose said. “Yeah, I know that bit.”

They shared a giddy smile and Pete cleared his throat.

“ _Anyway_ ,” the Doctor continued. “They broke relations with the Sycorax, oh, about 500 years ago. Now the Sclorum live on one of the moons.”

Rose nodded. “Yeah, and?”

He blinked at her, and then slowly raised his gaze to look around the hub. The rest of Torchwood stared at him with rapt attention. The Torchwood member from earlier nervously twitched his hands over his keyboard. Pete held a comm silently in front of his mouth.

“Doctor,” Rose prompted, “are they dangerous?”

He swung his gaze back to her, mouth opening and closing as he fought rising panic. He could remember the history of the Sycorax and Sclorum right down to the final battle of the revolution, but beyond that, he didn’t know. The Sclorum could be just as likely to throw them a tea party as invade.

“We can target them in five minutes,” Pete said. “Just give us the word.”

Rose’s gaze never left his, but she addressed Pete, “We can’t do that. It’s not right.”

“If the Doctor says—”

“Well, he won’t. Will you, Doctor?”

She looked at him with so much _trust_. He swallowed, knowing the situation was too dire to keep lying to her. “I don’t know.”

Her gaze faltered. “Don’t know what?”

“I don’t know if they’re dangerous,” the Doctor said. He ran one hand through his hair, focusing on the radiation patterns. He knew he _knew_. He just didn’t know. “Think,” he muttered. “Think, think, think.”

Nothing.

He let his arm drop uselessly back down to his side. Rose was still staring at him, looking more and more worried.

“I can’t remember,” he finally said honestly. “It’s up there, somewhere. All of it is—all those little Time Lord bits, but I can’t… I can’t find it.”

“It’s got to be in there somewhere,” Rose pressed. “The Time Lord part is still in there, yeah? You’re still…” She trailed off suddenly, clamping her mouth shut, but they both knew what she’d been about to say. _You’re still you_.

He sighed, suddenly exhausted by _this_ , this being human, with its small brain and sifting memory. How did these people do it day-after-day, year-after-year? He was going mad and it had only been a few months.

“Doctor, we need a decision,” said Pete. “What’s it going to be?”

His gaze lingered on Rose, but he turned to face Pete. “Push your button,” he said. “Chances are, it’s probably hostile. You’ll have a better chance if you attack now than when it’s one the ground.”

Rose gasped. “What?”

“Ship that size, it needs an almost constant supply of fuel. It’ll burn this planet to the ground to get it.”

“Hold on,” Rose said. “You don’t know that. You’re only guessing.”

“Rose—”

“No, Doctor, I won’t let you do this.” She turned to Pete. “Dad—”

“I’m sorry, Rose, but he’s right. We have to do this now.”

“It doesn’t work like that!” she said. She pushed her way between them, getting up in the Doctor’s face. “Look at yourself, Doctor. This is not you.”

His heart pounded loudly in his ears and each breath was an effort. He didn’t remember breathing this much as a Time Lord. There was a bead of sweat collecting on his forehead and he told himself to just _think_.

“They’re scavengers,” he repeated. He tried to sound confident and he pointed at the screen. “Rose, if they’re after fuel, they won’t let _anything_ get in their way.”

“Jenkins,” Pete said, addressing the trigger-happy soldier on their right. “Do you have a lock on their position?”

“What?” Rose said. “No, you can’t. Doctor, this is exactly what the other you was worried about. Don’t you see that?”

The Doctor rubbed at the back of his neck, trying to get a handle on his rapid heart rate. This one heart was useless. How did humans cope with feeling like this _all the time_?

“Rose, you're not my minder. Or nanny.” Her mouth dropped open in a silent gasp, dark eyes widening, but he pushed around her and crouched down by Jenkins’s shoulder. A red bar showed a 60-second countdown. “There we are. Good man.”

“A _nanny_?” Rose said. “Good to know what you think of me.”

He didn’t reply and stared very hard at the screen. 40 seconds.

“I didn't _ask_ for this,” Rose continued, voice rising. "Didn't get much of a choice, if you recall."

The Doctor gripped the back of Jenkins’s chair, jaw clenched very, very tightly. "Oh, so now I'm a burden for you? That's brilliant. Thanks." His eyes ticked to the status bar on the computer screen. "25 seconds until detonation."

“That's not what I'm saying!" Rose said. “It's just... we never talk about it. He—you—the other you, he _left_ me. And we just go on and pretend everything’s fine, like you’re exactly the same as you used to be when you can’t even remember who the bloody Sclorum are! And will you just _shut that thing off_?”

Jenkins twitched, shooting a nervous look over his shoulder.

"Don't shut it off," the Doctor said before whirling around to face Rose. "You're right. I can’t remember who they are and I can’t remember when Susan’s birthday is or when I made my first sonic screwdriver. I have nine hundred years worth of memories and experiences, and I’m forgetting them, bit by bit. What does that make me when I don’t even have that?”

Rose looked like she didn’t know what to say. Tears sprung in her eyes and she looked away from him, focusing on a point over his shoulder.

Jenkins’s computer began beeping wildly, and Pete elbowed his way in between the Doctor and Rose. “For haven’s sakes, we haven’t got time for this. Jenkins shut that thing off. We’re not going to shoot down an unknown aircraft.”

“It’s not an unknown aircraft, it’s the _Sclorum_ ,” he said irritably. A sudden thought struck him. “The SCLORUM! OF COURSE!”

Rose jumped, seeming to come out of her hurt daze. “Doctor?” she murmured.

“They _are_ a scavenger race, but they’re not hostile,” he said. “Don’t much like a fight, that lot. If we just—” He shoved on Jenkins’s arm, pushing him out of his chair and onto the floor. He sat down, fingers flying over the keyboard. Rose leaned over him, hair brushing against his neck.

“What is it? What are you doing?”

“It’s all about the bigger dog,” he said. “Show them who’s in charge and they’ll respect it. We don’t need to shoot them, we just need to _scare_ them.” He readjusted the path of Torchwood’s target-gun. “ _Now_ you can fire.”

There was a loud roaring sound from beneath the base and he and Rose both ticked their eyes towards the vidscreen. A beam of energy shot out from the hub, headed for the Earth’s atmosphere. It went straight for the ship and then just missed it—sailing harmlessly over it.

He heard Rose suck in an audible breath. Pete stilled, eyes also fixed on the vidscreen. Jenkins pulled himself up from the floor, mumbling about a bruised elbow.

After an interminably long few seconds, the Sclorum ship stopped and hovered just over the planet. Then it turned around, speeding off in the opposite direction. There was a stunned silence in the hub and then it exploded into applause, all the scientists and soldiers clapping and giving each other high fives.

The Doctor sagged back in the chair, removing his glasses and sliding them gently into his pocket. One of Rose’s hands drifted to his shoulder. He raised his hand to place it gently on hers. Neither of them said anything.

Pete glanced in their direction and then gestured to the rest of the monitoring personal, firmly pushing them out the door.

Jenkins lingered behind. “He _pushed_ me…”

“You’ll recover,” Pete said, nudging him in the back.

As soon as they were gone, the Doctor released Rose’s hand and swivelled the chair around. “Rose—”

“Doctor,” she said at exactly the same time. They both stopped and smiled sheepishly at each other. Rose wiped her eyes, and said, “You first.”

“Right,” he said. She looked at him expectantly. Now that it was his turn, he had no idea what to say. “Crisis averted, then. Solved that one in just the nick of time.”

Rose didn’t look too impressed by this declaration. She folded her arms over her chest and watched him silently.

He sighed, and decided to get to the point. “I had no idea that you felt so abandoned by the other me. We never really talked about it, did we?”

He saw a flash of hurt in her eyes. “No. It seemed easier that way, I suppose.”

“The last thing he wanted was to leave you behind, Rose.”

“He didn’t even say goodbye,” Rose hissed. She swallowed. “He just… left.”

“You were kissing me at the time, remember? He couldn’t say goodbye. He just… couldn’t.“

“Yeah?” Rose said, voice cracking. “He put an entire _universe_ between us. What am I supposed to think?”

“That I’m _right here_ ,” he said in frustration. She looked at him, startled into silence, and he opened his arms. She took the hint and sunk against him, arms winding around his neck and hanging on tightly. The chair was a bit on the small side, but they made it work. She pressed her nose to his chin and then let her head rest on his shoulder.

“How long have you been forgetting?”

He hesitated, “Months. Most of the time, I hardly notice. But sometimes…”

“The Sclorum,” she said dully. She bit her lip and then blurted, “What if you forget me?”

“ _Never_ ,” he said immediately. He grabbed her hands and pressed them to his chest, over his one heartbeat. “That won’t happen.”

“How can you be sure?”

“You’re everything,” he said. “How can I forget that?”

She licked her lips, beginning to smile. “Everything? That’s a bit…”

“Too much?” he offered.

She shrugged. “Sort of, yeah.”

“Okay, most everything. Well, ninety-percent. There is jam, after all. And pears.” He gave her a serious look. “Don’t you dare ever let me eat a pear.”

Rose laughed and then leaned in to kiss him.

****

He traced the names of the people he lost onto her stomach with his fingers. _Donna. Astrid. River Song. The Master._

Rose’s fingers slid through his hair, and he heard a smile in her voice. “You know, when you said you wanted to write on me, I actually thought it was code for foreplay. I had no idea you were being serious.”

He smiled and wrote the next name: _Jenny._

Rose twisted her neck to get a look at what he was writing. “Who’s that?”

“My daughter.”

Her fingers paused in his hair. “Your what?”

“My daughter,” he repeated. “Well, sort of. She was genetically engineered out of a single cell mutation to be the perfect warrior. She died a short while later.”

“Oh,” Rose said, voice soft. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” And then, “All those people—nine hundred years of them, each one special and brilliant in their own way. They’re disappearing. Faces don’t match names, names don’t match events. What good is it to be part Time Lord if I can’t even hang on to _that_?”

He could see it clearly. It would only get worse—grey hairs and wobbly knees and a memory turning into blurry snapshots and pictures. If he was losing track _now_ , what about forty years down the road? He needed to remember Gallifrey and Time Wars and Susan and Sarah-Jane and Jack and Martha.

“Doctor.” Rose’s hand cupped his cheek and she coaxed him up to look at her. He slid up her body, coming to rest beside her. “Tell me about them.”

He blinked at her. “I don’t know if—”

“I can help,” Rose said. “You’re not on your own anymore, yeah? I’ll help you remember them.”

“Rose, I have 900 years of memories locked away, and—”

“So what? It’ll just take a while, that’s all,” she said fiercely. “Two human brains are better than one. I won’t let you do this on your own.”

He gaped at her in mute adoration. Times like this, he almost felt overwhelmed by how much he loved her. He had no idea what he’d done to deserve this loyalty from her. Not for the first time, he wondered how his other self managed to leave Rose behind and walk away.

He pressed his nose to her cheek—she smelled like face wash and toothpaste, and then traced his fingers along her neck and shoulder.

_Gallifrey._

Rose shivered under his touch. “What’s that?”

“My home planet. Gallifrey.”

“Gallifrey,” Rose repeated, like she was testing the word out in her mouth. “Gallifrey.” She stared at him intently. “What was it like?”

Holding her eyes, he opened his mouth, and began to tell her everything.


End file.
